Thursday, November 24, 2016

Thankful

My earliest attempts at photo showing featured my Dad's barn as a backdrop.

My barn has recently found its way back to me. I am happy to have it, but also a little sad, so it's been sitting untouched on my coffee table for the last couple weeks.

Today is Thanksgiving, which is usually a busy day for me. This year, however, we're eating at Carol's, so I was left with a lot of time on my hands. I decided to dust off Dad's barn and take a few updated pictures.

This barn is beautiful and features all of my Dad's usual attention to detail. However, it's not an ideal photo prop. When Dad was designing it, he asked me how big the stalls should be. I consulted a book and told him that an ideal stall was twelve feet long by twelve feet wide. He did the math and decided that was much too big. We ended up making each stall just wide enough to house two traditional scale models. That's a perfect size for play, but it looks a bit crowded when viewed through my camera's lens.

Still, if I'm creative, I think I'll be able to work with it.

The holidays are harder than usual this year, but despite everything, I really am thankful. Thanks for the barn, Dad, and for everything else, too. I love and miss you.

Awww... *sniff* You are so lucky your dad made you that beautiful barn! I really don't know why, despite loving woodworking, my Dad never did that. I think because he was always hard at work on some giant human-scale project like bunk beds or a new kitchen table.

I spent about a half an hour this weekend poring over the Breyer catalog, which I've never gotten before for some reason. Oh, what fun I would have had with that stuff as a kid... would have killed for a barn, and real rider dolls, and jumps and I think most of all an English saddle and bridle. I never, ever had one English tack. Only the plastic Western stuff that came with various models and the Johnny West collection!